Garden Chipper/Mulcher

O

OBrien

Guest
Does anyone have any experience of these machines? Having spent the weekend hacking through the jungle that was our back garden, I think I need to buy a chipper/mulcher now, as instead of having a distant back garden full of overgrown trees, briars and nettles, I now have the proper part of the garden covered in piles of cut down stuff. Are they effective, or robust enough to handle a lot of debris? How powerful do they need to be? Petrol or electric? I understand they start around €200. Any advice appreciated.
 
If you intend chipping big chunks of wood you will need a heavy duty machine as the smaller ones get blocked easily. Petrol is very noisy, electric ones are slightly quieter. If you are going to chip small prunings, branches etc it's probably worth investing in one as they are handy. We got ours second-hand for 200 euro (Husqvarna).
 
Chipper

Bought one for £209 a couple of years ago- good make and I can safely say that it was a waste of money, forever jamming. The branches need to be thick enough without bending ie for hedge clippings it is useless. If you want it to get rid of small branches, check the diameter. Make sure you get a demo of the one you are thinking of buying or you can buy mine for €100 !
 
Chipper

I think I'm more confused than ever now- I have a combination of hedge clippings/briars & nettles as well as thicker branches to get rid of somehow. I'd hoped one of these machines would just chew it all up and leave me with a mulchy type mix which could be scattered across the newly razed ground.....
 
Re: Chipper

contact your local hire shop they should have several types from small to very large.

I found rathfarnham hire very helpful.

I hired quite a small electric one and to be honest it was very hard work. I'd go for something bigger and more powerful next time.

Penang
 
O Brien

I've had a recent & painful experience with a chipper/mulcher.

Our back garden was also jungle like and we were hoping to reduce the brambles/branches/trees to a mulch which we could then dispose of in the green dump. We rented an electric chipper which was a huge waste of money. It would only take branches of up to 1.5 inches and even at that it struggled. It often got jammed and you had to feed in each branch one by one which takes a lot of time when you have the amount of waste I had. We have up after about an hour.

Sam hire do not stock the chippers because they received so many complaints about them. I got mine from Edenmore Hire - who I believe have a petrol one which is much better. However, we could not use it as we have a terraced house and could not get it through the house (it's very big).

We ended up chopping down the waste and dumping it in a skip.

On a separate note, we recently had the ESB in the area chopping trees that were interfering with the ESB poles. There was a company doing the job who had a chipper truck - maybe they would be better placed to get rid of the waste? They just chuck the stuff in the back of the van where there is a large chipping machine. Not sure of the cost though.

Hope this helps
 
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